


Clowning About

by KoboldKing



Category: Doctor Who
Genre: Gen, Prompt Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-23
Updated: 2018-11-23
Packaged: 2019-08-28 09:04:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,138
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16720386
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KoboldKing/pseuds/KoboldKing
Summary: The Doctor is attacked--more inconvenienced, really--by a homicidal mechanical clown that's a third of a second away from biting his face off.





	Clowning About

**Author's Note:**

> Written in response to [holliequ's prompt thread on reddit.](https://www.reddit.com/r/FanFiction/comments/9t7xjn/studies_in_miniature_daily_prompts_november_2018/)

He opened the broom cupboard and a killer clown popped out.

Blimey. That was a shot of rotten luck. If killer clowns were going to be involved then he _wouldn't_  be the silliest looking person in the room, and that ran contrary to his life philosophy.

Oh, also...

It had rows of razor sharp teeth that were going to be shearing through his skull in 0.3 seconds.

The plural of "second" then wasn't really applicable. Hrrm. Well, there went about 0.08 second. He was getting sloppy this regeneration. Very sloppy. There was going to be another incident like with that mokele-mbembe, and Amelia would never let him live it down.

Amelia. She'd be counting on him here. They all would; they needed the Doctor. They needed the Doctor and they needed him to be clever.

Well then, time to be clever.

Now, it wasn't _really_ a clown any more than he was a handsome Englishman with a cool bow tie and a dashing chin. The way the flickering station lights reflected off of its skin suggested it was an animatronic with a flimsy artificial epidermis stretched across an internal titanium frame. That was consistent with the technology he'd scanned elsewhere on the derelict space station; human in origin, circa the 29th century. Of course it was humans. Who else made robot clowns with a propensity for violence?

Knowing who _built_ the robot that had bitten off his frontal lobe wasn't going to safe his life, however. It would be much better to survive and be able to file a complaint in person. Analyzing the way it was springing forward out of the cupboard--now 0.19 second away from devouring his face--he found he had a pretty good idea how the mechanisms in its joints operated. It had a limp in one leg that suggested it had jammed at some point. If he could trigger a jam in the other leg, he would trip it up, knock it off balance, and be able to control its continued motion.

Problem was, he wasn't as young as he'd used to be, and he'd let his Venusian aikido rust a _tiny_  bit more than he should have. Very not good. Fortunately, he just needed an implement he could forcibly shove through the clown's knee, jamming it at the joint and depriving it of its bouncy exuberance.

But what? _What?_ He'd given Rory the sonic screwdriver so he could open the sealed hangar and get the stranded nuns to safety. He hadn't thought to grab a fork out of the kitchen when they were chased by those robotic velociraptors earlier, and for _some_ silly reason he'd stopped carrying a stick of celery with him at all times.

0.08 second remaining. Oh, that was just grand. After all these years, getting defeated by a clown. Now he'd know how Davros felt. Could it at least not be in a _broom cupboard?_

...wait.

Broom cupboard!

That was it! The clown had been hiding here to ambush them, but it had inadvertently given him exactly the tools he needed to win!

Quick scan: yes, there _were_ brooms in this broom cupboard. They were a bit too wide, but if he splintered one at precisely the right angle it would leave a protruding wooden point that would fit neatly in the robot's vulnerable jointed knee.

Amelia was screaming. Well that was silly. Jumpscare aside, if he died she had a mindboggling _5.4 whole seconds_ before it would catch up with her. Some people fretted far too much about worries in the far future.

The Doctor carefully calculated his hand's movement to a broom in the closest corner of the cupboard. It was a swift, precisely plotted movement; this was a timed chess game, and there would be a winner within six moves.

He held up the broom. Move one.

The animatronic clown lunged towards his face in the arc he'd calculated. Move two.

He pressed the broom into its bite. The broom snapped in two, leaving him with nothing in between his face and the rows of razor sharp titanium teeth. Move three.

He leaned backwards in a comical, exaggerated fall. As he did he plunged the shard of splintered broom he still had in his hand right through the animatronic's knee. Move four.

He'd fallen so ludicrously flat on his back that the animatronic had to take another step forward to loom over him... except now, there was a broom stuck in its knee. Its internal hydraulics were powerful, but also designed to have a handler nearby to fix any mechanical difficulties. It had been built for entertainment, after all, with an idea that a qualified human entertainer would also be on standby to keep human five year-olds from shoving crayons or space-time radio antennae into its joints.

That was move five. Move six was simple. Now lying flat on his back, he kicked the broom cupboard firmly shut, shoving the clown back and closing it right back where it belonged. Behind a sturdy door and with a jammed leg that wouldn't move.

He sprung back up to his feet just as Amelia finished her scream.

"Nothing to worry about!" he said quickly. Ooh, it was nice to talk in faster time again. When you were about to die the seconds just dragged _on_  and _on_  and _on_. "Just a bit of a feisty malfunctioning robotic death clown. Don't worry, it should be stuck in there now."

Amelia looked confused and more than a little frightened. "What--Doctor, that was a killer clown!"

"Actually, it's still a killer clown. Except now it's a killer clown that's closed into a cupboard."

"It almost had your face," she said, catching her breath. She almost managed to sound scolding, as though he'd been somehow reckless.

"It didn't _get_  my face," he insisted with a huff. "And it never would have. You see, it made a terrible, terrible strategic error: it attacked me in a _broom cupboard._ "

He grinned at her, content with this explanation. She didn't seem nearly as impressed, but he strode quickly past her anyway.

"Come along, Pond!" he said cheerily. "There's still a malfunctioning and very grumpy AI controlling the station. Somebody's got to stop it, and I don't see the Clown Police here to do it. And frankly, they're a bit of a bureaucratic mess anyway."

Amelia moved at a half-jog to keep up with him. "But how are we supposed to shut it down? It's controlling all the-"

"Haven't you noticed?" he interrupted. He turned on a dime to face her, giving her his craziest, most encouraging smile. He straightened his bow tie, and through that simple little action he could see the uncertainty melting off her face.

"I'm the Doctor," he said. "I always figure something out."


End file.
